CHAPTER I
VINTAGE-TIME IN TUSCANY
A DESCENT from the Apennine on a September evening into Tuscany, with the moon nearly full—that moon which in a few days will be shining in all its power upon the delights of the vintage week—this I want to recall to you who have shared the pleasure of such an experience with me.
A descent into the Garden of Italy, spread out wide in a haze of warm air—can custom stale the feeling which that brings to heart and mind?
Railway travel has its poetry, its sudden and emotional contrasts and surprises. But a few hours ago we were in the foggy drizzle of an autumn morning at Charing Cross, and, ere we have time to be fagged by a too-long journey, our eyes and brain receive the image of the Tuscan plain!
The train slows down for a moment on emerging from the last tunnel at the top of the mountain barrier; the grinding brakes are still, and for a precious instant we listen at the window for the old summer night sounds we remember and love. Yes! there they are; there he is, the dear old chirping, drumming, droning night-beetle in myriads at his old penetrating song, persistent as the sicala’s through the dog days, local in its suggestiveness as the corncrake’s endless saw among the meadow-sweet all through the Irish summer night.
But, avanti! Down the winding track with flying sparks from the locked wheels, every metre to the good; down to the red domes of Pistoja; forward, then, on the level, to Florence and all it holds.
How we English do love Italy! Somewhere in our colder nature flows a warm Gulf Stream of love for what is sunny and clear-skied and genial, and I think I may say, though my compatriots little realize it, that the evidences of a living faith which are inseparable from Italian landscape greatly add to the charm that attracts us to this land. What would her hills be if decapitated of the convents on their summits, with each its cypress-lined Via Crucis winding up the hillside? The time of the after-glow would be voiceless if deprived of the ringing of the Angelus. Dimly we perceive these things, or hardly recognise them as facts—nay, many of us still protest, but they draw us to Italy.